like him. That they looked like something completely different. I can understand that. Heterosexuality – it’s all about being attracted to someone who doesn’t look like you, isn’t it?’
‘So if he liked Asian girls – if this guy who wasn’t Rhett Butler was into the bamboo – why did he like you?’
‘Search me. I think I was an aberration. A working holiday. I don’t know.’
She brushed her black bell of hair from her forehead and stared at me with those wide-set brown eyes. Now she mentioned it, I could see how someone who was into the bamboo could fall for her. In a certain light.
‘We were together for two years,’ she said. ‘One year back home and another year over here. Then he reverted to type. Or I found out that he had reverted to type. With a Malaysian student who he met in a park. He showed her London – and a few other things. He wasn’t a bad guy. He’s still not a bad guy. I just chose wrong. What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, what happened to your marriage?’
I tried to figure out what had happened to Gina and me. I knew that it had something to do with getting older and taking something for granted and feeling that life was slipping away. James Stewart could have explained it to me.
‘I don’t really know what happened,’ I said. ‘I lost my moorings there for a while.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Cyd said. ‘You mean you fancied a quick fuck?’
‘It was more than that. Although that was a part of it. But I just – I don’t know how to explain. I sort of let the light go out.’
She stared at me for a moment and then she nodded.
‘Let’s go and look at the lights,’ she said.
It was dark now. On the other side of the river you could see the illuminations running all the way along the embankment like a string of pearls. In the morning you would be looking across at grey office blocks and another traffic jam and the city scuttling to pay the rent. But tonight it was beautiful.
‘Looks like Christmas,’ she said, taking my arm.
It did. And it felt like Christmas too.
‘I’m going to take a chance on you,’ she told me.
When the chain-smoking babysitter realised that we weren’t going to steal her away forever, Peggy was finally allowed to come home with Pat for a couple of hours.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ she told me, producing a little man made of moulded plastic. He was looking very pleased with himself inside white satin trousers, a spangly silver waistcoat and what looked like a purple tuxedo.
‘Disco Ken,’ she said. ‘Barbie’s friend. Going to the disco.’
It was strange watching them play together. Pat wanted to blow up the Death Star. Peggy wanted to hang drapes in the Millennium Falcon.
Excited to the point of hysteria at having his friend in his very own living room – although noticeably unimpressed by Disco Ken – Pat bounced off the furniture waving his light sabre above his head and shouting, ‘I’ll never join you on the Dark Side!’
Peggy considered him with her solemn dark eyes and then began moving little Star Wars figures around the Millennium Falcon – heavily Sellotaped on one side after crash landing into a radiator – as though they were having tea and buttered scones at the Ritz.
Nature or nurture? I knew that Pat had never been encouraged to play violent games – in fact his never-ending blood baths often drove me up the wall.
Not quite five years old, he was actually a gentle, loving little boy who was too sweet for the rough and tumble of the playground. There had been some bullying because he didn’t have a mother waiting for him at the school gates, and neither of us had yet worked out a way to deal with it.
Peggy was completely different. At five-and-a-half, she was a strong, confident little girl who nothing seemed to faze or frighten. I never saw any fear in those serious brown eyes.
Pat wasn’t built for hunting and gathering, and Peggy wasn’t made for making jam and jumpers. Yet give them a box of Star Wars toys and suddenly they were responding to their gender stereotypes. Peggy just wasn’t interested in games of death and destruction. And that’s all that Pat was interested in.
It didn’t stop them from enjoying each other’s company. Pat hung on to the back of the sofa, grinning with love and admiration as Peggy shoved little figures of Princess Leia and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker around grey plastic spaceships which had clocked up a lot of miles in hyperspace.
‘Where’s your mum?’ Peggy asked him.
‘She’s in abroad,’ Pat said. ‘Where’s your mum?’
‘She’s at work. Bianca picks me up from school but she’s not allowed to smoke in the flat. It makes her grumpy.’
There didn’t seem to be a man anywhere near Peggy’s life, but that was hardly worth commenting on these days. I wondered who he was – probably some jerk who had fucked off the moment he was asked to buy some nappies.
The door bell rang. It was one of those young men who are out of work but not yet out of hope. I admire that spirit, and I always try to support them by buying some chamois leather or rubbish sacks. But this one didn’t have the usual kitbag full of household goods.
‘Really sorry to disturb you,’ he said. ‘I’m Eamon. Eamon Fish.’
At first it didn’t register. Living in the city you get so used to complete strangers knocking on your door that it comes as a shock when someone who has actually touched your life rings the bell.
But of course – this was Eamon Fish, the young comedian who would probably be doing beer commercials and sleeping with weather girls by this time next year. Or next month. Or next week. The same Eamon Fish whose show I was asked to produce and had turned down because of fish finger cooking duties.
I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t know why he was here. I was expecting some down-at-heel young man who was going to sell me chamois leather. And here was some down-at-heel young man who would soon be getting pissed at the next BAFTAs.
‘What can I do for you?’ I asked him.
‘What’s that?’ he said, frowning and cocking his head towards me.
‘What do you want?’
‘Can we talk? It would mean a lot to me.’
I let him in. We went into the living room where Peggy and Pat were sitting surrounded by an avalanche of toys. Pat still had his light sabre in his hand.
‘Wow,’ Eamon said. ‘A light sabre! Traditional weapon of the Jedi Knights! Can I have a look?’
A slow
